Elite is the most grindy game I've ever played

[Dbrn47]

Grind is only a stat of mind.
every game is a grind if you play it that way or look at it that way.

with no end goal or wall infront of you the game can not be a grind you are just playing it that way

Grind is not a state a mind, it's a consequence of progression based gameplay. You are either good at hiding the grind in your game with depth, story or otherwise or you lay it out so obviously that it hurts. So far they have done nothing to really hide the grind, they've just added added more things to grind toward. It is NOT up to the player to not grind, you grind as soon as you begin playing the game so that you can earn credits to upgrade your grindship so that you can grind faster to get into a bigger grindship sooner. At a certain point you become happy with your grindship and don't need to upgrade it or get into a bigger grindship, so then it's about 'grinding fun'. You repeat the tasks that you enjoy the most over and over under the veil of fun, the grind is there, you've just chosen to ignore it because you are having fun. Not everyone is so easily entertained for endless hours and the grind reveals itself to players that demand more sooner.

It's said that this is what Elite was all about to begin with, that's fine. Let's not try to pretend or delude people into believing it's not there though. There are plenty of statistics, bars, percentages, credit reminders, options and the general speed in which they move to constantly remind you it's there. You can ignore it in order to just have fun, but you can't ignore it out of existence.

 

[askavir]

Trust me having a ton of money and all the ships makes no difference in this game whatsoever.

Yes it absolutely does.

The ships is mostly what this game is about, and you can do a lot more things with better ships and outfitting.

 

[Marshall...]

You don't have to grind mate!

I myself have not been grinding really at all and that is since mid beta last year (August). i have been far to busy, doing my own thing and general "stuff" in game, that credits are a by product of it. Hell, there have been some weeks where i have'nt made any money at all, I've just been helping out other players or exploring for fun.

Some folks race to get the ranks, or an Anaconda, whilst i have been pootling along and have only just bought myself an Anaconda.

 

[CMDR NightsLong]

Clearly did not play Anarchy Online

 

[Kristov]

EVE is not that grindy. Its all offline skill training; more specifically an artificial time sync.

Grind is really all in the eye of the beholder, Chip's statement kind of makes that clear doesn't it?

600 odd hours in game, not done any grinding at all, just bebopped about doing missions and exploration and some combat here and there, quite a few millions earned, enough to have outfitted an Anaconda nicely, and I'm in a Python with D class modules having fun doing courier and light cargo missions, no grind, just having fun and enjoying the game.

 

[Rami77]

"It's only a grind if you make it one", "You have to use you imagination!", "Its not you kind of game! or "Go play call of duty!"

The fanboy excuses for this DEAD game are more boring then the "game" itself.

 

[Andrew Gaspurr]

And this is coming from a person that has played Eve for some time and lineage in the past. Frontier deserve an award or something.
Don't get me wrong I do like the game but if a similar one comes out with some meaningful content Elite will be erased from the map. However, having no competition has worked for Eve for more than a decade and only just now their past mistakes and overall laziness are catching up to them.

It's not Science Fiction per se but did you play Lord of the Rings Online after it went FTP? Go there, play some and come back here and beg forgiveness

 

[Satsuma]

I play this game all wrong.

I like exploring. I like going out and seeing what I can find. I did it in my Sidewinder for the first month I played this game. Then I switched to my Freagle. I spent some credits upgrading that thing - probably about 200k - but it was all money that came in as a side effect of exploring in my Sidewinder. I spent a few months in that Eagle exploring. When I lost it, I thought "Gosh, I want a Cobra, but I don't have the credits. I'd better grind..." So I did exactly 6 rare trade runs (2 in a Sidewinder to afford a Cobra, then 4 more in the Cobra to afford an explorer fit). Then back to exploration. Wandering around in that Cobra, visiting things that seemed neat to me, got me enough to fit out my current exploration Asp, which really only just gives me a better cockpit view and a better ability to check things out further on the edges of the galaxy.

So I've been playing since Gamma, with the occasional RL-induced breaks, and I've only managed to work up to a nice Eagle, a pair of Cobras, and an Asp. I'm not Elite in anything (though I'm getting there on exploration, again just as a side effect of what I like to do in the game), and my wallet is only in the low tens of millions. But every time I log into Elite, I do so with a grin at the thought of what I might find in the game. I'm clearly playing it all wrong, but I don't care to play it any other way.

 

[Cpt SilverFox]

And this is coming from a person that has played Eve for some time and lineage in the past.

worse than Lineage? Holy subclass this had me rolling on the floor dying!
As others have said, if you play ED like that, you are going to ruin it.

 

[Faybs]

I decided to wipe my beta save to try the new planetary start location, and to my surprise I love being back in a sidey with just some loose change in my pocket. Getting interdicted by pretty much anything is now a life or death situation, whereas before I'd let the turrets in my conda take care of the miscreant while I made a half-hearted attempt to duck and weave. I now need to make sure I have enough cash before I take off, and keep a close eye while I'm in supercruise because even a shieldless eagle is a challenge again. I'm pretty positive I'll be wiping my main save next week, restarting from scratch made the game a lot more fun again.
.
TL;DR: being in an ubership is not necessarily the best way to have the most fun in this game

 

[Dakron Nova]

Playing since Beta last year, I dont grind. Progression comes from emergent game play as I explore the core systems. I find taking this approach yields all sorts of surprises.

Grind if you want to, but this commanders not for Grinding.

 

[Privata]

Grind is not a state a mind, it's a consequence of progression based gameplay. You are either good at hiding the grind in your game with depth, story or otherwise or you lay it out so obviously that it hurts. So far they have done nothing to really hide the grind, they've just added added more things to grind toward. It is NOT up to the player to not grind, you grind as soon as you begin playing the game so that you can earn credits to upgrade your grindship so that you can grind faster to get into a bigger grindship sooner. At a certain point you become happy with your grindship and don't need to upgrade it or get into a bigger grindship, so then it's about 'grinding fun'. You repeat the tasks that you enjoy the most over and over under the veil of fun, the grind is there, you've just chosen to ignore it because you are having fun. Not everyone is so easily entertained for endless hours and the grind reveals itself to players that demand more sooner.

It's said that this is what Elite was all about to begin with, that's fine. Let's not try to pretend or delude people into believing it's not there though. There are plenty of statistics, bars, percentages, credit reminders, options and the general speed in which they move to constantly remind you it's there. You can ignore it in order to just have fun, but you can't ignore it out of existence.

There are no goals in elite , its a life sim. do what you want.

 

[lysan]

I'm still flying a Viper. Grind is a choice, no?

But but but, Its a gold Viper... O.O

 

[GJ51]

I grind.

And

I enjoy it.

Being able to own any ship in the game is fun, but it doesn't stop me from flying my Cobra.

 

[tawittle]

Elite is not "grindy" at all compared to most MMOs.

Even most multiplayer games have a level of "grinding" equivalent to ED.

 

[MrRixter]

Yeah, it is. I don't get why there are posters in this forum who insist that it isn't, that grinding is just a choice of the (inferior) gamer and that it has nothing to do with Elite: Dangerous. It's clearly not true from the game design. This is a game that aims to engage players for years, and to do that you've only got a few options in game design:

1. Tap into addiction-based gameplay, into the RPG/grind psychology, à la Jeff Vogel's great article.
2. Develop extensive emergent complexity so no two encounters ever seem the same.
3. (Completely new to me) Have an aesthetic and culture that promotes a kind of basking in the immersion of the setting.

FD definitely use 1 in this game. I don't see how anyone can deny that they intentionally use that mechanism. How many hours of gameplay is required to unlock all content? How does the game define your combat experience – is it with the legend of how you killed one particularly nasty Pirate Lord, or is it with the fact you made 200,000,000 cr destroying ten thousand ships in about six distinct types of confrontation?

Some fans seem to enjoy the game for years through option 3. This is new to me, and I'll admit I don't completely understand how that's supposed to keep players gripped for so long. There are other games out there, other experiences out there – like real life ones – and I don't think the bulk of the quiet majority of this game's players will stay interested because simply launching their HD Cobra fills them with never-ending joy.

Elite: Dangerous uses addiction/grind-based gameplay. It's part of the game. It's also the least good part of the game, and FD's main challenge from now is to develop option 2. It's entirely doable for them, though Horizons is kind of a diversion from it. I'm glad you posted this thread, and I hope the like of it continues to be posted despite the vocal minority who insist that grinding mechanics are all an illusion. This is a great game that has the potential to be exceptional, but that potential won't be realised unless FD hear that the game is a grind right now, and see that emergent complexity is the answer to losing players.

Pretty much this. Frontier is purposely locking content behind copious amounts of grind, if you want to make some decent progress you have to grind and there is no way around it. I like to think they're doing this to hold on players until they can release some proper content. However, the latest announced ranks for the new big ships show the exact opposite. They got a whole new expansion ready and they seem to not be confident in the amount of content it can provide to players so they're introducing even more grind. If the rumours about BB refreshing going away are true then I really don't see new players sticking around for long.

 

[Zieman]

"It's only a grind if you make it one", "You have to use you imagination!", "Its not you kind of game! or "Go play call of duty!"

The fanboy excuses for this DEAD game are more boring then the "game" itself.

LOL! What would you expect, on the GAME's own forum?

But seriously, those "E: D is a dead game" jokes really got old several months ago.

 

[Privata]

"It's only a grind if you make it one", "You have to use you imagination!", "Its not you kind of game! or "Go play call of duty!"

The fanboy excuses for this DEAD game are more boring then the "game" itself.

Your funny.
The game is not dead it has thousands of players on during all hours of the day.
It beats all the others and is so much fun , so immersive and there so much to do.

not to be clichee but maybe this game is not for you... and if you dont like it , what are you doing here?

 

[Bacalao]

<Insert game I just started playing here> is just about the most grindy game I've ever played.
And
<my idea> is a simple solution that will make this game so much more fun and wouldn't take any dev time.

these are probably 2 of the most common threads on every video game board. Just behind "this game is dying" threads.

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

Eh, EVE is still worse. At least skill/initiative has an effect on progression instead of being purely time based. I seen a thread on Steam made by a new player that made enough in their first 4 days of trading to afford a Python and they were on their way to a Anaconda.

The game is way less of a grind than it used to be. The only problem right now is the universe doesnt give a sense of accomplishment outside of ship upgrades/personal goals, so things seem to happen with no effect. Its not that everything is text based and NPCs have no voices, its because there simply isnt enough depth to the NPCs in general.